| From: Elroy Jetson | 2/1/2023 2:28:29 PM | | | | | | In the state of Arizona Trump's typical performance will become a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison and a requirement to register as a sex offender.
Young man, no need to feel down - unless he performs in Arizona.
A new bill in Arizona would criminalize drag in presence of a minor, defined as singing or dancing while wearing make-up. - legiscan.com
The old entertainer Donald Trump in make-up performing crowd-favorite YMCA by the Village People
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| From: Elroy Jetson | 2/1/2023 11:36:20 PM | | | | | | Brexit's a complete disaster for trade - Shropshire business owner - bbc.com
Three years on since the UK left the European Union (EU), a Midlands business owner has described the move as a "complete disaster".
Nic Laurens, who runs an abrasives supply firm in Shropshire, moved 90% of his company to the Republic of Ireland in order to remain in the EU.
Higher costs and piles of paperwork to export goods left customers with four-week waits for orders, he said.
The UK government has claimed "trade to both EU and non-EU countries is above pre-Covid levels".
However, Mr Laurens, a former Conservative councillor, said Brexit had left his firm facing filling out 24 forms to export goods into the EU.
"Brexit has [caused] barriers to trade and additional costs that you have to pass on to the consumer," he told the BBC.
"We've had to completely rethink our business model.
"The UK hasn't grown, it has stagnated, but the Irish side of the business has gone from strength to strength."
Mr Laurens' company supplies abrasive tool parts
All of the products at his company, Severn Diamond Tools and Abrasives, are manufactured abroad.
"We never ship anything from the UK to Ireland anymore. The last time we did, it took four weeks for a parcel to arrive to the customer. Before Brexit it used to take three days," Mr Laurens said.
"As a business, we have no plans to invest in the UK market because of the uncertainty around the government."
Nationally, when the British Chambers of Commerce surveyed 500 firms, more than half of them said they were still grappling with the rules for trading within the Union.
The red tape may have deterred some small exporters altogether. A study of customs classifications shows the variety of goods British businesses export has diminished.
Leaving the EU also meant changes to the rules on the free movement of labour and the introduction of a points-based immigration system that has prompted complaints from some unlikely quarters.
Shamim Husein-Miya, the business director of Five Rivers Restaurant, said the Walsall firm had had to adapt the way it recruited staff. "As a business, we looked at overseas recruitment for many years before Brexit, but now it has been more challenging."
However, as many around the country struggle to cope with the rising cost-of-living, the restaurateur said it had boosted staffing levels, with many people now seeking second jobs and other means of income.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted the UK economy will shrink and perform worse than other advanced economies, including Russia, as the cost of living continues to hit households.
The IMF forecasts the UK economy will contract by 0.6% in 2023, rather than grow slightly as previously predicted.
The UK government has previously claimed Brexit "opens new opportunities for UK businesses" but can't point to any.
Speaking in December, it said: "Despite difficult global economic headwinds, UK-EU trade is rebounding, with recent data showing that UK trade to both EU and non-EU countries is above pre-Covid levels," adding exporters had been provided with "practical support" with post-Brexit trading arrangements.
"We've also removed 400 trade barriers across 70 countries in the past two years, removed tariffs on £30bn worth of goods and cut £1bn business costs arising from current retained EU law," a spokesperson added. |
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| To: nicewatch who wrote (10280) | 2/2/2023 4:25:41 AM | | From: elmatador | | | | Mogul Lost Tens of Billions of Dollars in Days. What Happened?
Gautam Adani is facing perhaps his biggest challenge yet as a small U.S. investment firm accuses his Indian conglomerate of fraud and stock manipulation.
By Vivek Shankar
Published Jan. 31, 2023Updated Feb. 1, 2023
Louis Vuitton. Tesla. Amazon. The businesses behind the richest people in the world need no introduction. But last year, a name that does not command the same global recognition joined this rarefied list.
The new entrant was the Adani Group, an Indian conglomerate that controls ports, coal mines, food businesses, airports and more. The group’s astronomical rise had given Gautam Adani, its politically connected founder, a fortune of nearly $120 billion, according to Bloomberg, putting him in the company of Bernard Arnault, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
Mr. Adani’s time in that echelon did not last long. Even though he remains enormously wealthy, on paper Mr. Adani has lost more than a quarter of his wealth, or more than $36 billion, within days. And he is facing perhaps the biggest challenge of his career.
Last week, Hindenburg Research, a small investment firm in New York, accused Mr. Adani’s company of “brazen accounting fraud, stock manipulation and money laundering.” The Adani Group has rejected the claims from Hindenburg, which stands to profit if the conglomerate’s shares fall.
On Tuesday Adani Enterprises, Mr. Adani’s flagship company, raised $2.5 billion by selling new shares to investors, a move in the works before Hindenburg’s report. The sale provided a brief respite from the bad news, and then shares of his companies resumed their descent the next day.
In a surprise move on Wednesday, Adani Enterprises reversed course and said it was scrapping the offering, citing “market volatility.” It said in a statement that it wanted to “protect the interest of its investing community” and would return the money.
Since the report, the Adani Group has shed tens of billions of dollars in market value in less than a week. And Mr. Adani’s reach — he runs one of the biggest conglomerates in India — could portend a wider fallout for a country that has been a global economic bright spot.
“He’s a risk to the Indian financial system,” said Tim Buckley, an analyst in Sydney, Australia, who has followed Mr. Adani’s business for more than a decade.
Here’s what you need to know about the Adani Group, its founder and Hindenburg Research.
The Adani Group reached new heights in recent years. Mr. Adani started a polymers import-export business in the 1980s and gradually expanded into infrastructure.
In the 1990s, he started building a port in Mundra, in his home state of Gujarat. He went on to add coal mines, power plants and airports to his portfolio. In the last decade, he secured one of his biggest international deals — the Carmichael project in Australia, one of the largest open-pit coal mining operations in the world.
Last year, the Adani Group bought a cement business in India from Holcim, a multinational construction company based in Switzerland. In another sign of the diversification of his business, Mr. Adani took control of NDTV, an independent news outlet.
The Adani conglomerate’s success in some ways paralleled the growing Indian economy, which is now the fifth largest in the world. Mr. Adani, 60, has styled himself as an industrialist who is helping to address his country’s lack of infrastructure.
Critics say Mr. Adani’s political connections set him apart.The Adani Group would not be where it is, its detractors say, without its founder’s proximity to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which has helped the company win lucrative contracts or, in some cases, have bidding rules changed altogether.
Mr. Modi, like Mr. Adani, is from Gujarat, and when Mr. Modi became prime minister in 2014, he flew to New Delhi on an Adani plane. Mr. Adani’s relationship with Mr. Modi has created a widespread perception in India that Mr. Adani can strike any deal he wants, creating an uneven playing field.
Mr. Adani has rejected claims of preferential treatment. The foundations of his business, he said in a recent interview, were laid in the 1980s, when the Indian government relaxed trade restrictions.
“My professional success is not because of any individual leader but because of the policy and institutional reforms initiated by several leaders and governments over a long period of more than three decades,” Mr. Adani told the magazine India Today.
Mr. Adani faced controversy before Hindenburg’s allegations.
The billionaire has generally kept a low profile even as he has become one of the richest men in the world. He is a follower of the Jain religion, which emphasizes asceticism, and he and his family tightly control his conglomerate. (Hindenburg has criticized the ownership structure of his company.)
Months before Hindenburg made its allegations, the dizzying rise of an Adani subsidiary’s shares drew scrutiny. Much of the trading activity in the subsidiary, Adani Enterprises, was traced to holding companies based in tax havens, leading to speculation that the stock — which had helped propel Mr. Adani’s personal wealth — was being manipulated. Shares in Adani’s seven subsidiaries have soared more than 800 percent in the past three years, according to Hindenburg.
Previously, Mr. Adani’s company faced investigations into allegations of tax impropriety related to coal imports but was eventually cleared. Mr. Adani was also linked to an Indian stock market manipulation scam engineered by a Mumbai stockbroker, Ketan Parekh.
As Mr. Adani’s business empire has grown, he has turned to foreign banks to fund his acquisitions and investments. That, said Mr. Buckley, the Australian analyst, could mean more scrutiny.
“The big issue is that Adani has spent the last four years in raising debt on Wall Street,” Mr. Buckley said. “If you raise money in America, you have to play by America’s rules.”
Hindenburg has a good track record.Named after the famous doomed airship, Hindenburg is what is known as an activist short seller on Wall Street. The firm hunts for frauds and other irregularities in public markets, exposes the wrongdoing and makes money while doing so. It profits when its target, often a publicly traded company, sees a drop in its share price. (ELMAT: Brace for a film... This is blockbuster material)
Activist short sellers have been criticized by some for betting against businesses. The shorts say they are helping police the market.
Hindenburg, which is only a few years old, has targeted about 30 companies and made its name by taking down Nikola, the electric vehicle maker. According to Bloomberg News, stocks in those companies fell about 15 percent, on average, the day after Hindenburg issued its reports, and were down 26 percent six months later.
In the Adani Group, Hindenburg’s founder, Nathan Anderson, has taken on a goliath. Hindenburg said it had researched Mr. Adani’s businesses for two years before publishing its report on Jan. 24. The Adani Group has threatened to sue Hindenburg, which responded by saying it would welcome a suit in the United States, where it could demand Adani documents as part of legal discovery.
Among Hindenburg’s allegations are that offshore shell companies run by Mr. Adani’s older brother, Vinod Adani, helped the conglomerate manipulate its share prices.
The shell companies are also used to launder money from private Adani companies to the publicly listed ones, (ELMAT: Looks like Angoan Isabel dos Santos!) Hindenburg said, “to maintain the appearance of financial health and solvency.”
Highlighting what it called “obvious accounting irregularities and sketchy dealings,” Hindenburg said the fact that the listed Adani companies did not have long-serving chief financial officers was a red flag.
The short seller also called into question the quality of the independent auditor for two subsidiaries, Adani Enterprises and Adani Gas. Employees of the auditor were “essentially fresh out of school, hardly in a position to scrutinize and hold to account the financials of some of the largest companies in the country.”
Hindenburg went on to say that even if its allegations were ignored, the Adani Group companies were so overvalued that their stocks could fall 85 percent. The group, Hindenburg added, is also overburdened by debt.
The Adani Group has called Hindenburg’s allegations an attack on India and its “growth story and ambition.” Hindenburg has countered by saying, “India’s future is being held back by the Adani Group, which has draped itself in the Indian flag while systematically looting the nation.”
The fight could have geopolitical implications, given the United States’ courting of India as a counterweight to China, as part of a grouping called the Quad that also includes Japan and Australia, Mr. Buckley said. It is unclear how the conflict will be resolved, but one thing is certain, he said: “It is going to be very complicated.” |
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| From: elmatador | 2/2/2023 5:17:49 AM | | | | | | Darktrace responds to short seller allegations on accounting practices UK cyber group rebuts claims that it employed tactics similar to Autonomy in order to inflate sales figures
ELMAT: Is short: Did a Javice.
Quintessential Capital Management alleges that Darktrace has deployed similar sales tactics to Autonomy, the UK software company with which Darktrace shares many ties
Darktrace responds to short seller allegations on accounting practices on twitter
Darktrace responds to short seller allegations on accounting practices on linkedin (opens in a new window) Anna Gross in London YESTERDAY Print this page
Darktrace has rebutted claims from a US hedge fund that alleges the cyber security group appears to have created “fictitious clients” in an attempt to inflate sales figures, defending itself from the short seller’s attack.
The FTSE 250 company announced on Wednesday that it would buy back up to £75mn worth of shares a day after New York-based Quintessential Capital Management published a detailed report on Tuesday alleging irregular accounting practices at Darktrace.
Quintessential’s allegations include: Darktrace appears to have simulated or anticipated sales to “phantom” customers through a “network of willing resellers”; that it seems to have incorrectly booked sales of hardware as software; and may have misrepresented the nature of its revenue.
Poppy Gustafsson, Darktrace chief executive, described Quintessential’s allegations as “unfounded inferences”. “I stand by my team and the business I represent,” she said in a statement on Wednesday, arguing the company has robust accounting and auditing practices.
Darktrace’s share price fell 12 per cent when Quintessential first disclosed its short position on Monday and a further 8 per cent on Tuesday after the hedge fund released its report, though it has gained 3 per cent on Wednesday following the share buy-back announcement.
The short seller alleges that Darktrace has deployed similar sales tactics to Autonomy, the UK software company with which Darktrace shares many ties. Autonomy was accused of irregular accounting practices relating to its $11.7bn sale to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
Gustafsson, previously Autonomy’s corporate controller, helped set up Darktrace using funds in part from former Autonomy chief Mike Lynch.
Lynch is battling against extradition to the US to face fraud charges after the High Court found in 2022 that he and his finance director defrauded HP by manipulating Autonomy’s accounts to inflate the value of the company. He has denied the accusation.
Sushovan Hussain, the former chief financial officer, is serving a prison term in the US after being found guilty of fraud relating to the sale.
“Neither Darktrace nor any of its acting executives has ever been the target of these litigation proceedings,” Darktrace told the Financial Times.
Among Quintessential’s allegations is that Darktrace appears to have repeatedly asked its resellers to acquire a product before a buyer has fully committed in order to inflate its sales figures — a practice known as channel stuffing.
The hedge fund described the practice of “shifting tomorrow’s revenue into today’s books” as “unlawful and unsustainable”.
The short seller’s most serious allegations relate to episodes where the end user in question dropped out of an anticipated transaction, including cases where Darktrace appeared to have sponsored marketing events in order to repay resellers for sales that never happened.
Darktrace said that it only recognises agreements made by resellers that meet rigorous criteria that it developed ahead of its public listing in 2021. The company added that contracts that do not meet its standards have not been included in its IPO prospectus or annual reports.
Darktrace also said it is typical to co-host marketing events with partners and resellers, and that it has not found any evidence of unusual practices surrounding any of these events.
Quintessential also claims it has found several instances where, at least until 2020, Darktrace appeared to have sold — rather than lent — its hardware to customers while it may have kept the devices on its books as assets, allowing it to potentially inflate its profit margins and earnings.
Inaccurate accounting around hardware sales was also central to the court case brought against Autonomy and its executives. Darktrace countered that in the vast majority of contracts, it loans rather than sells appliances to customers. The company added it holds hardware appliances as assets that depreciate over a five-year period.
Darktrace said in the small number of cases where it sells the appliances to customers, it follows the correct accounting processes, recognising all revenue and costs up front.
Quintessential said Darktrace’s deferred revenue — payments for a software contract in advance of delivering the service — decreased from 33 per cent in 2018 to 9 per cent in 2022. It has suggested that Darktrace may have been “striving to inflate its revenue figures” by “booking unearned revenue as actual sales”.
Darktrace has responded that it is currently rare for customers to pay full contract values in advance of 12 months. The company also argued it has never been contacted by the authors of the Quintessential report for information or comment |
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| To: nicewatch who wrote (10283) | 2/2/2023 5:28:43 AM | | From: elmatador | | | | Easy Money. How many more are out there?
Charlie Javices sold the student financial aid startup Frank to JP Morgan. Mike Lynch sold to HP.
UK Home Secretary Priti Patel tonight approved Autonomy founder Mike Lynch's extradition to America to face criminal charges over the multi-billion-dollar sale of his tech biz Draktrace to Hewlett-Packard |
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| To: elmatador who wrote (10284) | 2/2/2023 5:58:22 AM | | From: nicewatch | | | | | Am sure there are plenty, but an Autonomy, Darktrace, or Frank are garden variety frauds compared to how Adani is shaping up... a takedown of Asia's richest man (on paper) with political connections in a developing country that happens to be the second most populous in the world. That's definitely not an everyday garden variety type of fraud, imo. Maybe the mechanisms are but it's an order of magnitude larger and like you said should make for a good movie! ;-) |
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| To: nicewatch who wrote (10286) | 2/2/2023 10:57:08 PM | | From: elmatador | | | | Thanks. It is interesting to note how the press avoids quoting the dirty dealings
The coverage has been light touch.
It shows how they are intimidated.
Question
How many more are lurking out there? |
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